C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien once went to a party dressed as polar bears. It wasn’t a fancy-dress party. According to Humphrey Carpenter in his biography of Tolkien, Tolkien went to a New Year’s party in the 1930s as a polar bear, wearing a sheepskin with his face painted white. Neil Heims, in a recent book on Tolkien, lists Lewis as his fellow party guest, similarly attired in ursine costume. Certainly, the eccentric sense of humour of the two writers is well known: according to Carpenter, Tolkien was also known to dress up as an axe-wielding Anglo-Saxon warrior and chase his bewildered neighbour down the road.